Bonsai ("tray-planted") trees are living dwarf trees, and "bonsai" refers both to the trees themselves and to the art of training and growing them. A bonsai tree originates as an ordinary tree or shrub that is dwarfed by a system of pruning and training. The roots may be, and the branches usually are pruned; and the branches are conventionally trained by wrapping them in aluminum or copper wire and bending the wire-wrapped plant into the desired shape.
The inspiration for bonsai is the dwarfed and gnarled trees that grow in rocky crevices of high mountains or cliffs. The desirable bonsai specimen is a plant that is made to mimic the dwarf plants naturally occurring. Among the desired traits are an aged appearance of the trunk and branches and a weathered character in the exposed upper roots. Aesthetic considerations include relatively small leaves or short needles, small flowers and fruit, open space between the branches, open space between clusters of foliage, and bare lower trunks. These aesthetic qualities are said to reflect the idea of mutability in physical things. Bonsai plants range from 2 inches, up to about 4 feet in height.
The art of bonsai probably originated in China over 1,000 years ago, and thereafter has been pursued and developed by Japanese artisans. Japanese bonsai plants are shown as long ago as 1309, in the Kasuga-gongen-genki, a picture scroll by Takashina Takakane. In current times, a bonsai industry of considerable size exists as part of the nursery business in Japan, and the technique is pursued also in the United States and elsewhere.
Traditional bonsai training techniques are based on wrapping a young plant to train it and its branches to assume a new position, leaving the wraps on for one or more growing seasons, and removing the wraps afterwards. The wrap presently used is most often a steel, aluminum or copper wire. The wire is coiled around the stem of the plant and then a skilled artisan makes the appropriate bends. After leaving the wire in place for six to twelve months, the wire is removed by uncoiling or by cutting the wire into small pieces.
To be completely certain of the plant's progress, the wire must be checked, as often as weekly, and loosened from time to time. If the wire is not loosened, the stem could grow into the wire and the plant will be scarred. These scars destroy the naturalistic look of the plant and substantially reduce the commercial and aesthetic value of the finished product. If the wire is left on the plant too long, the plant will be scarred, but if the wire is removed too soon, the trunk will revert to its original shape and would require rewiring.
The traditional technique is time and labor intensive. In the first instance, each plant must be painstakingly wrapped and bent. In a large scale setting, this is extremely time consuming. Moreover, because the plants must be checked, as often as once a week to prevent scarring, it is difficult to use the traditional method in any large scale nursery operation where hundreds or thousands of plants might be involved. In such a setting, there are simply too many plants to check and recheck so as to monitor and prevent the growth of the stem into the wire by loosening and resetting the wires as necessary. A substantial number of wasted plants or lower value "seconds" is the result of a large scale nursery operation conducted according to the traditional wire-tied technique.
In addition, the traditional technique requires the employment of highly skilled artisans. An artisan applies the wire wrap to the young plant and makes the appropriate bends. The aesthetic value of the bonsai is dependent upon a generally zigzag series of side to side bends to the stem, with the bends being proportioned in size and spacing. At the same time, the branches are set at appropriate intervals and orientation from the stem. An additional dimension is added by a further zigzag series of front to back bends (complementing the side to side bends) to create a fully natural appearance, and also creating a "front" or viewing side. The skills involved in shaping a bonsai plant by eye and artistic judgment are not easily developed. The relative shortage of such skilled workers is a barrier to the large scale nursery cultivation of bonsai plants, and is a barrier to the wide-scale introduction of bonsai plants into the United States and other countries.
Applicant is aware of various plant support structures that serve generally to support or shape a plant. Examples of these include the devices described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,993,184 of Howe (heart-shaped free standing plants); U.S. Pat. No. 4,881,342 of Ferguson (vertical plant supports); U.S. Pat. No. 4,333,264 of Smrt (sic) (tree clip and post); U.S. Pat. No. 4,026,068 of Tepper (tomato plant support); U.S. Pat. No. 3,004,366 (plant support for holding a plant or vine in an upright position); and U.S. Pat. No. 2,557,731 of Felsing (multi-positionable trellis). Other such structures are shown in International Patent Application No. PCT/DK89/00039 (International Publication No. WO 89/07391) of Johansen, et al. (plant supporting stake with retaining fingers); Soviet Union Patent No. SU-632,325 of Mukhin et al. (bending fruit trees into a "living hedge" shape); and French Patent No. FR-680.147 (vertical plant support).
None of the foregoing examples shows or suggests an apparatus that is suitable for the special problems of bonsai plant training, and none of the foregoing examples shows or suggests a method of plant training that is suitable for bonsai training.
The desired bonsai plant training method should reduce the time and labor involved, both in setting the desired bends in the first place, and in checking and rechecking the plants to prevent scarring. The desired bonsai plant training method should open the field to persons who are not highly skilled artisans by permitting them to set a series of zigzag bends, including bends from front to back and bends from side to side so as to create the aesthetically approved appearance without special skill. The desired method should rely upon a readily produced apparatus that greatly simplifies the work of bonsai plant training.
It is a specific object of the method and apparatus of this invention to provide a method and apparatus for bonsai plant training that is suitable for large scale nursery production of aesthetically pleasing bonsai plants with substantial savings in time and labor costs, and that can open the field to persons who are not skilled artisans.